People
who are interested in the way that SeeClickFix enables citizens to
interact with their government simply and intuitively will probably enjoy Clay Shirky’s book Cognitive Surplus. The
premise of the book is that the internet is enabling individuals to
participate in and contribute to collaborative projects that are having
profound and positive effects on society. One of the most well known examples of this phenomenon is is Wikipedia. We at SeeClickFix were especially interested in the story Shirky tells of "The Responsible Citizens,” in
Lahore, Pakistan. The
Responsible Citizens were a group of Pakistani teens who used facebook
to recruit their friends to pick up garbage at a local market that was
notoriously messy. Shirky writes, “Once the three had enough recruits
to join them, they showed up on the streets on Sundays, gathering trash
from a public market in Anarkali. Local citizens and merchants at first
merely observed, but as the Responsible Citizens kept returning, the
locals began to join them. This new labor, in turn, helped the Citizens
expand to other markets in town.” The
experience of the Responsible Citizens reflects the
civic momentum that we observe as more and more areas start to make use
of SeeClickFix. Initially, there are a few early adopters who are
especially interested in social media or technology. Then, average
citizens who just want the government to fix the street light on their
block start to use it. As the energy behind SeeClickFix builds in a
community, this often leads to early conversations with local
governments or media partners who are curious about how they can use our
tools to engage with citizens. Moreover,
with SeeClickFix, community members don’t actually have to personally
witness the their neighbors working to improve their community to catch
the spirit, as they did in the case of the Responsible Citizens. Any
resident of Washington, DC, or Raleigh, NC, or Oakland, CA
can just look at the SeeClickFix map of their city to know about the
efforts currently underway to improve the public space in their towns.
This helps to build the type of community enthusiasm that the
Responsible Citizens were able to build in Lahore everywhere that people
use SeeClickFix. This civic momentum is growing in the United States, but it is
not limited to this country. In fact, there was an issue
reported on SeeClickFix not far from Lahore, Pakistan just a few months
ago. I wonder if the teenagers Shirky writes about had something to do
with this? Cognitive
Surplus quotes from the Responsible Citizens manifesto: “We wish to
nurture in everyone a community spirit.” This is a complicated,
important undertaking, and we’re proud to share in this work with them.

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